First off, I would like to thank Steve Smith, @ardalis, for encouraging me to go to CodeMash 2015. Without him, I would have just written off CodeMash as a crazy conference for the locals in Cleveland, where people go to freeze. But now I know differently.

Here is a list of my takeaways from CodeMash 2015:

Man there are a lot of kind, fun, geeky, software engineering and technology enthusiasts in the world. I am not alone!

On day one, I spent half of the day working on creating a mobile friendly Web API for the Humitarian Toolbox project (github.com/htbox). @billwagner and @tonysurma where there to help me get started, and I appreciated the introduction. I spent the second half of the day brushing up on my SOLID C# skills creating a little RTS shoot’em up game on Mars. Many thanks to Nicolas Martin who helped me during this session when I had some questions. At the end of the day, I got to play Artemis and kick some Rebel butt. All in all, a fulfilling day.

On day two, I spent the entire day with @jenniferMarsman and @davidgiard learning how to create games for many different platforms using Construct. I actually got so far as to create two levels of a game that I have high hopes for releasing to the Windows Phone app store among others. Given that I have a day job, it will probably be a few months. I can’t thank @jenniferMarsman enough for all the help and enthusiasm on this topic. It is the most fun I have ever had at a conference (best session ever). I got to round out the day by playing some Nuns on the Run (a board game) with some kindred spirits.

On day three, I went to session after session with @williamklos getting me fired up about queuing strategies, @garyshort making data science look easy, @careypayette giving an IoT talk that made me want to fly back home to tinker more with my Galileo, and @theSeanOC giving me some great insights on how bit.ly achieves such great up time. At the end of the day, I got to play a good long game of Caverna with the guys from DNSimple. Does it get any better?

In summary, I would highly recommend the CodeMash conference. If my recap above sounds interesting to you at all, then I can guarantee you will have a great time, as I have a propensity for understatement. I know for myself that I’ll be back.